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The Australian Federal Police (AFP) continued their targeting of Islamic State (IS)-aligned terror cells operating throughout Australia in a raid that was executed in Melbourne this past Saturday that resulted in the arrest of two members of the attack cell. This was followed up with a third member of the cell being arrested along with a 14-yr old boy in the UK who was detained by British authorities for being tied to the plans. Although it remains unclear at this time just how the boy fits into the scheme, it appears that he was maintaining direct contact with members of the cell online. The two 18-yr olds are said to be part of a cell that was planning to attack and kill an Australian police officer, take his weapon and use it to fire on civilians attending an ANZAC Day event that was to be held on Saturday.

Anzac terror plot: Third man held in custody as details of alleged attack plot emerge

The selection of ANZAC Day to carry out the attack isn’t surprising in the least as the day honors the brave men that served in the Australian and New Zealand Armies who died in all wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations in addition to the contributions of all those who served. ANZAC Day is also of significance to IS in the sense that it was originally honor the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli agains the Ottoman Empire during World War I – a battle that the Turks (Muslims) won, although it would prove to be the last gasp of the Ottoman Empire. One of the two individuals arrested in Melbourne are identified as Sevdet Ramadan Besim, who recently appeared in court and charged. This is significant due to his friendship with the late-Numan Haider, who was killed in a SEP 14 AFP operation when he stabbed an AFP officer with a knife – implying that the planned attack was at least partially influenced by the SEP event.

The attack itself shares many similarities to the 2013 murder of British Soldier Lee Rigby in London that we discussed in “Target America: Hunting the US Military.” In that piece, we put on our Red Cell hats and described how a lone wolf or cell of jihadists who couldn’t make the trip to Syria would go about targeting and killing a US service member. Although the article was about targeting US military personnel, the strategy also extends to Canadian, British and Australian military personnel as outlined in previous IS videos threatening each nation. The Rigby murder demonstrates how easy it is to cause havoc by targeting individual police and military personnel – which is further reinforced by IS videos stating that such attacks are just as “honorable” as conducting a high-profile attack or fighting on the front-lines in Syria. The Melbourne plot had the very real potential of being even worse since it called for the use of the slain police officer’s weapon to conduct a follow-on attack targeting the civilian population. Its cheap, effective and doesn’t require any specialized training. In other words, what we’re seeing is the “death of a thousand cuts” IS style.

Although everybody seems to be focused on the British kid, Haider and Besim’s links to the al-Furquan Dawah Center and Bookshop are of greater interest as a frequent preacher there is Muhammed Junaid Thorne – a known IS facilitator linked to recruitment and facilitating travel to Syria. As we discussed in “The Continuing Flow of Foreign Fighters From Australia,” Thorne and his close-friend Robert “Musa” Cerantonio had been quite active at their mutual associate Wissam Haddad’s al-Rislah Bookstore. As you may recall, the Bankstown-area bookstore was being as a recruiting hub and facilitating the travel of jihadists to Syria through Haddad’s network of donors and Syria-based contacts within the IS ranks. Before al-Rislah was shutdown, it had made several postings on social media that demonstrated its pro-IS alignment. Its also worth noting that Cerantonio, Haddad and Thorne are all actively working with the pro-IS organization Millatu-Ibrahim AU, which is the Australian branch of a jihadist entity that originally operated in Germany prior to being banned from the country – where it now operates “underground.” Millatu-Ibrahim also has a branch in Denmark that has been allowed to thrive in the European nation.

Thorne’s efforts in reaching out to his European counterparts may have facilitated a greater flow of ideas between the two continents that led to the disrupted plot being modeled on the Rigby murder. Another chilling aspects of all this is that the decision to plan for launching the attack on ANZAC Day was likely influenced by Thorne and led to the young jihadists getting in touch with structural IS member Neil Prakash aka “Abu Khalid al-Cambodi.” He’s a 23-yr old Australian national of Fijian/Cambodian heritage (hence the name “Cambodi”) that took over the duties of the late-Muhmammed Ali Baryalei, who was one of the top recruiters for IS leading up to his death. Cambodi is very active on social media and had threatened the Australian government about “the brothers” who couldn’t travel to Syria, implying that there would be attacks inside Australia itself. Its said that Cambodi played a significant role in identifying promising recruits to serve in the “Anwar al-Awlaki Battalion” that we discussed in “The Increasing Role of Aussie Jihadists in ISIS Efforts to Expand into Southeast Asia and Strike the West.” The Anwar al-Awlaki Battalion consists of foreign fighters from Australia, the US, UK, Canada and was established to get a cohesive unit of westerners for the purpose of eventual redeployment back to their countries of origin – where they would set up their own networks for launching attacks on the home front. This is only part of what Cambodi’s strategy, the other being inspiring homegrown cells, even linking them up with jihadists who returned from Syria and giving them advice on which targets to consider developing for future attacks. In fact, he just recently put out a video in response to the disruption of the ANZAC Day plot calling for additional attacks on Australian soil and praised Haider.

The timing of the recent attack in Kabul (which will be covered in an upcoming article) and the ANZAC Day plot are unlikely to be a coincidence. It also means that other attacks may be planned elsewhere. That said, we expect the remaining personnel operating in Melbourne to lay-low this weekend to avoid capture while the cells operating in locations such as Brisbane and Sydney likely maintaining a low-profile. After a week or two those cells will probably work to change up their current OPSEC TTPs in order to mitigate further targeting in addition to doing an assessment on their current plans to determine if they’ve been compromised. We assess that JUN through AUG will likely see renewed efforts by the Australia-based terror cells to regain the initiative. Fortunately, our Australian allies are already tracking and will continue to crackdown on IS and their supporters. The US government could learn a thing or two on how to take the fight to the terrorists…

The weekend’s feel-good story about a Muslim “ring of peace” formed to “protect” Jews at an Oslo synagogue turned out to be a complete fabrication by the mainstream media, according to an eyewitness report, local officials, and attendees’ photos.

According to a local eyewitness, only about 20 or so Muslims formed the “ring of peace” around the Oslo synagogue. In fact, pictures from multiple angles show that there wasn’t enough people to form a ring, so the locals instead formed a horizontal line in front of the synagogue.

A local news outlet explained how the media got to its “1,300 Muslims” number. “According to police, there were 1300 persons present in the event. Very many of them ethnic Norwegians,” read a translated report from Osloby.no.

Demonstrators also reportedly chanted, “No to anti-Semitism, no to Islamophobia,” conflating criticism of Islam and hatred of Jews.

Photos pulled off of social media appear to corroborate the narrative that only twenty or so people formed the “peace ring.”

Multiple news outlets, including wire services for hundreds of news sites, ran with the false narrative that 1,000 or more people–sometimes all of them Muslim–formed the ring of peace outside of the Oslo synagogue.

The AP incorrectly reported, “More than 1,000 people have formed a ‘ring of peace’ outside Oslo’s main synagogue at the initiative of a group of young Muslims.”

AFP reports almost identically, “More than 1,000 people formed a ‘ring of peace’ Saturday outside Oslo’s main synagogue at the initiative of a group of young Muslims. The newswire agency has no excuse for the false report, as it had a photographer taking shots of the “ring” at the scene–and one shows a man who appears to be at the end of the line of hand-holders, with his left hand in his pocket.

The far-left Think Progress site published a story titled, “More Than A Thousand Muslims Form Human Shield Around Norewegian Synagogue After Copenhagen Attacks.”

Even Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported, “More than 1,000 Muslims formed a human shield around an Oslo synagogue on February 21, offering symbolic protection for the city’s Jewish community and condemning an attack on a synagogue in neighboring Denmark the previous weekend.”

In even worse news, it appears as if the organizer of the Muslim “peace ring” is a virulent anti-Semite, 9/11 truther, a gay-basher, and an Israel-hater.

Ali Chishti, who organized the event, said bluntly in 2008, “I hate Jews and how they operate,” reports Daniel Greenfield. Chishti added in his conspiracy-laden rant about the Jewish people, “It is a fact that during the attacks on the Twin Towers [World Trade Center] 1600 Jews were absent from work. OK, OK, what’s even more suspicious, is how unusually many Jews there were present in Mumbai on the day that Pakistani terrorists struck. How come?”

At a March, 2008 meeting in Oslo promoting his 9/11 conspiracy theory that the Jews were responsible for the World Trade Center attacks, Chishti read his speech titled, “Therefore I Hate Jews And Gays,” Haaretz reports.

As it turns out, as many as 40 times more Northern European Muslims attended the funeral of a Copenhagen Muslim terrorist than those who decided to form the non-existent “ring of peace” around an Oslo synagogue.

In its infinite wisdom the Obama administration announced plans to dramatically increase the number of Syrian War refugees being accepted into the confines of our borders. As of this writing, the largest concentrations of resettled refugees are in California, Illinois and Texas. As one would guess, there some serious concerns with the very real (and likely) possibility of terrorists associated with the Islamic State (IS) entering our country under the “refugee” label. DoS claims that “only the small minority who are in the most dire need, including the very young, ailing and elderly, and people who have been persecuted by their government” will be resettled in our country. The problem with that is the “very young” tend to have parents and siblings who tend to follow them – but the Obama administration conveniently leaves out those inconvenient details. DoS also makes the claim that they’re actually going to “screen” applicants, but how well they screened the Boston Bombers (the Russians had warned us about those two) doesn’t inspire much confidence from our staff. Its also worth noting that the Obama administration has been saying that the screening process is more “rigorous” since 2009 – so when was the Boston Bombing again?

Coming soon to a neighborhood near you…Source: The Daily Telegraph (UK)

Remember, this is the same Obama administration via DHS that lost track of over 6,000 foreigners last year who overstayed their visas. As much as the Obama administration would like for you to believe, the ugly truth is the US government doesn’t have any real checks and balances nor does it have the political will to properly enforce the current immigration laws on the books. People applying for visas of any kind, refugee status/political asylum from countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Algeria, Libya, Syria, Iraq – places where most of the populations despise us – red-flags should immediately be raised that should result in the application being promptly rejected. Unfortunately, people working in immigration and customs tend to simply push them along no questions asked – and that’s not even getting into the Pandora’s Box that allowing more Syrian refugees into our country would open.

If you want to get a glimpse into America’s future all one needs to do is to look at Europe. As we discussed in our recent piece titled “The Jews: Europe’s Canary in the Mine on the Growing Jihadist Threat,” we laid out how years of political correctness and failed social experimentation has led to serious problems bubbling to the surface in Europe. Specifically, we showed how the EU members’ refusal to confront the jihadist threat has led to an increase in terror attacks with Denmark used as a case-study. Countries like Denmark, France, Germany, Belgium and the UK have been extremely generous in taking in Syrian War refugees and immigrants from other nations with large jihadist populations. Common sense says that Gulf nations refusing to take in refugees should be a huge red-flag to the US and its European counterparts. Unfortunately it isn’t. We just had a series of attacks in France from DEC 14 – JAN 15 and two more shootings in Denmark over the weekend, yet Europe continues to live with the delusional concept of “multiculturalism.”

A prime example of this is the threat that people just now realized exists from Libya on the other side of the Mediterranean. IS clearly sees the many vulnerabilities inside Europe in terms of how easy it is to gain access to member nations, as demonstrated by calls from the terror organization to infiltrate the continent posing as migrants. Indeed, Libya is a “gateway” to Europe but so are Turkey and Cyprus. Due to EU members being so inviting, the US also runs the risk of failing to notice individuals of Middle Eastern/North African origins who obtained dual-citizenship who attempt to enter our country on a European passport. If these people wanted to truly integrate they wouldn’t be trying to push the issue with “Sharia Enforcement Zones” and forcing everybody to bend over to their cultural demands. The truth is most of the people coming from the above-mentioned countries have no desire to integrate into western society despite being all too happy to receive those welfare checks (like a certain Anjem Choudray). Europe is dying, only the European people and the naive politicians they elected to office don’t yet realize it. If America isn’t careful, our fate will be similar to their’s – and it will happen much sooner than you think. It may sound cold, but allowing these people into our country isn’t worth the risk…

Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt publicly denied the existence of a terror cell operating in Copenhagen despite the fact that Danish security forces conducted a series of raids on Monday that resulted in the detainment of two known associates of Omar Abdel Hamid al-Hussein, who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS). Both associates – aged 19 and 22 – are being charged with being an accessory to murder and five counts of accessory to attempted murder. “Accessory” as in helping the guys (oh yes there were others involved) who carried out the attack? As in a “cell” that might be part of a greater network? We think PM Schmidt doesn’t understand what a cell is or how it works. If she did, she wouldn’t have made the comment since a cell consists of multiple personnel that can range from as few as three individuals to as many as 20 (although with this many we start to enter network territory). A cell has people who provide intelligence support, logistical support, command and of course carrying out the operation. No, PM Schmidt, your security forces are conducting raids on a cell and there are likely still some members at-large. The ugly truth of the matter is the Danish government remains stuck in their mindset of not wanting to “offend” the Muslim community.

Unfortunately Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt views taking a selfie with President Obama as being more important than the defense of her peopleSource: LA Times

PM Schmidt also made an appeal to Denmark’s Jewish community in response to Bibi Netanyahu’s call for Jews to leave Europe and migrate to Israel. Schmidt says that “Europe won’t be the same if the Jews leave,” but what has she or the other empty suits occupying the highest political offices in the EU members done to counter the growing threat of jihadists? The Jews are the canaries of Europe’s mines – the fact that they’re starting to leave places like France, Belgium, the UK, Germany and several other European countries in droves is a significant red flag that not even Schmidt and her government can deny. This isn’t a new phenomenon either, as we’ve been seeing a steady increase in Jews leaving Europe over the past year due to the rising anti-semitism plaguing the EU. It should surprise no one that this increase in anti-semitism coincides with the exploding immigrant populations of people from Muslim countries known for their anti-western and anti-Jew sentiments. However, its not just anti-Semitic Muslim groups that Jews are worried about – there’s plenty of homegrown fascist Euro groups who share the jihadist sentiments about the Jewish people.

So why would Jews want to leave Europe besides the obvious attacks that occurred in Copenhagen over the weekend and last months attacks in France? For starters, there are Muslim-dominated neighborhoods in Germany that the Police refuse to patrol through because they’re so dangerous. This has allowed for jihadists to install their own “shadow governments” based off Sharia Law – and even have gangs of thugs wearing orange vests operating as the “Sharia Police.” The only reason the Germans did anything about it is because some international news outlets began covering the roving Jihadist patrols in the town of Wuppertal – which is one of several in Germany, France and the UK that we’ve heard about. Our staff doesn’t know what’s more disturbing, the fact that there’s “Sharia Police” or the fact that the German government seemed more concerned about receiving negative press as opposed to the fact that jihadist influences are growing within their own borders. We see the same problems in what’s being allowed to occur in Denmark.

Wuppertal’s Sharia Police before the real German police cracked-down on them – but only did so because of the bad press the government was receivingSource: The ISIS Study Group

A lot of European neighborhoods dominated by immigrants from Muslim countries will have guys like this on street corners handing out these unauthorized brochures to any non-Muslim unfortunate enough to take that wrong turnSource: Hurriyet Daily News

As we stated above, our staff has seen the very same shadow governments established at the local-level in Denmark that we’ve seen elsewhere in Europe – and that the Denmark zones have been operating for several years. Despite the Danish government’s best efforts to maintain the illusion that they’re the one country in the EU that doesn’t have a deteriorating security environment, the truth is they’re not immune. For instance, in 2011 the group known as Call to Islam openly campaign for the abolishment of democracy and calling on people not to vote in the Parliamentary elections held in SEP of that year. As we also stated in our 15 FEB 15 piece titled “Jihadist Infestation: Terrorism Results in Copenhagen Chaos,” IS facilitator Anjem Choudray’s Hizb ut-Tahrir (HUT) has been very active in the country. HUT held a “Proud of Sharia” meeting in Norrebrohallen in DEC 14. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss how to counter the Copenhagen city government’s proposed integration plan, which has a stated goal of getting the “number of Copenhageners who support Sharia Law to fall.” HUT’s stance on the city plan was that it was an “attack against Islam and Muslims” (sound familiar?) and held the meeting to demonstrate the support for Sharia Law that exists in the area. The city government plan? They think they can integrate people into Danish society that want to be integrated. This plan would work except for the fact that the people the government is privately concerned about have no desire to integrate and if anything are demanding that Danish society conforms to Sharia Law. In fact, Choudray himself visited Denmark in JUL 14 to set up more HUT offices in the Copenhagen-area and hold lectures on how to travel to Syria and the preach the virtues of Baghdadi’s “Caliphate.” The people who wanted to integrate into the mainstream have already done so and aren’t associated with groups and people like HUT, Choudray, Bilal Philips or the Islamic Society of Denmark – which btw was designated a terror organization by the UAE.

Ever the Pious Muslim, Anjem sampled beer as a young man so that other young Muslims wouldn’t have to and would later advocate “40 lashes to anybody caught drinking alcohol”Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/WEXhI

The video posted above is one of many calling for the establishment of Sharia Law-enforced “zones” in Denmark

The video above is on the calls for the abolishment of democracy in Denmark

Every group associated with IS facilitators such as Bilal Philips and Anjem Choudray have received specific guidance from the two men and their trusted acolytes to snuff out free speech and further the cause of the global jihadist community. This is done through specific Islamic centers directly linked to their organizations that receive money for the purpose of recruitment, radicalization and facilitating travel of personnel to Syria to serve as foreign fighters for IS. We’ve seen this same activity from supporters of these men in Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, France, Germany and the UK (just to name a few). Ten times out of ten if you come across an Islamic center or Mosque tied to either of these two men or their organizations, it means those institutions are being used to facilitate terrorism in some manner. Bibi and the European Jewish community see the writing on the wall and a lot of them don’t plan on sticking around in Europe long enough to see if the EU governments will actually start cracking down on the rising jihadist threat. We don’t blame them because its not safe for Jews or any American living abroad. PM Schmidt and her fellow empty suits better do something soon because the attacks in her country and France are only the beginning…

While the identity of the killer who attacked a free speech event and a synagogue yesterday in Copenhagen has not yet been released, media are now reporting that the suspect is “known to authorities” in what appears to be yet another case of what I have termed “Known Wolf” terrorism.

As the incident was ongoing yesterday, I predicted that such might be the case:

So this attack in Copenhagen is yet another in a growing line of terror incidents in the West in recent months where the attacker was already known to intelligence and law enforcement authorities, and yet sufficient action was not taken to protect citizens:

Earlier this month I noted that Moussa Coulibaly, who stabbed three police officers outside a synagogue in Nice, France, had just days before been deported from Turkey for attempting to join ISIS.

Man Haron Monis, aka Sheikh Haron, who in December took hostages at a chocolate shop in the heart of the commercial district in downtown Sydney, Australia, was not only known to law enforcement, but was out on bond on two separate cases and had previously been convicted of harassing the widows of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Authorities had been tipped off via their hotline to extremist statements Haron had been making on his website 48 hours before the attack.

What remains to be seen after this Copenhagen incident is whether Denmark’s very passive “jihad rehab” approach to jihadists returning home after fighting with terrorist groups abroad will come under review. That will especially be the case if the killer in this incident (as yet undetermined) had traveled to Syria or Iraq.

With Canada, Australia, France and now Denmark having citizens killed by these “Known Wolf” terrorists, one has to wonder when the U.S. will be targeted again, too.

The gunman believed to have attacked a Copenhagen synagogue and a free speech event on Saturday was a Danish-born 22-year-old known to police because of past violence, gang-related activities and possession of weapons, officers have said.

Police in Copenhagen are currently searching for two gunmen who opened fire with automatic weapons on a cafe in the Danish capital, killing one and wounding several including police. At the time of the event, Lars Vilks, a Swedish artist best known for his cartoon of Mohammad as a “roundabout dog” (an iconic Swedish image), was in attendance.

Vilks, who police believe was the target of the attack, has previously survived prior plots on his life including an attempted arson, and a plot involving American Islamic convert Collen Rose (aka “Jihad Jane”). The French ambassador to Denmark was also in attendance, and security was tight with multiple armed policeman providing security.

The topic of the presentation was on free speech, and the BBC noted the principal question focused on, “whether artists could “dare” to be blasphemous in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks by Islamist gunmen in Paris last month.”

With suspects not yet in custody (as of this writing), it’s too early to speculate whether the attackers will be linked to a jihadist organization such as Islamic State or Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (as the Charlie Hebdo attackers were), or if they will turn out to be “Known Wolves“, already on the radar screens of European intelligence.

But it is worth noting that the recent publication of the Islamic State’s “Dabiq” magazine Issue 7 focused extensively on the Charlie Hebdo attack and issued numerous and specific threats against supposed blasphemers, including U.S. citizens, and U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials should take seriously threats made against Americans for having violated sharia “blasphemy” laws. Like the Charlie Hebdo attack, today’s incident appears to be less about terrorism, than sharia enforcement. As a result, the response must include not only the full force of Western law enforcement capability targeting the individual terrorists, and their networks, but also a reiteration, by politicians and society more generally, of full throat-ed support for Western principles of free speech and a refusal to submit to the imposition of blasphemy laws, whether through violence, through international forums such as the Istanbul Process, or out of self-censorship.

Some three years ago, ex-Great Britain recognized Islamic polygamous marriages; “Oh, how tolerant we in Great Britain are!” After having admired their own generosity, tolerance and devotion to democracy, the British started to calculate the costs. The results were disastrous: Muslim immigrants’ wish to enjoy a happy marital life with four wives cost British taxpayers £5 million every year. And that is not all; the figure was calculated on 2007 statistics; keeping in mind the dramatic increase of the number of Muslim immigrants to Great Britain in the last 6 years, when over 500,000 of only “legal” Muslim immigrants arrived to this unfortunate immigration- hit country every year, the costs now are much higher.

In general the top five immigrant groups ranked by benefits dependency in ex-Great Britain are Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Turks, Somalis and Persians: all Muslims. And of the total number of Muslim immigrants living in Britain, more than 50% are economically inactive. Recent 2012 reports claim this number to have escalated to almost 85%. In 2012 75% of all Muslim women and 50% of all Muslim men were unemployed. And that is not the entire picture.

A minimum benefit payment in Britain is £67 a week, which multiplied by 4.25 million will give us an astronomic figure of£284,750,000 per week, or £1.1 billion per month, which are paid from the pockets of British taxpayers who by the opinion of their government must feed, care, teach and kiss Muslims and their numerous children goodnight.

But even this is not the end of the story, because this exorbitant sum does not include housing benefits, medical care and other rights utilized by the population. If we include them, then with housing, child subsidies and healthcare, Muslims cost the British taxpayers at least£18 billion a year. Instead of informing the native Brits about how they must tighten their belts, all the British government has to do to lighten the burden on the public budget is to reduce the 85% inactive Muslim population.

Muslims constitute only five percent of the population in Denmark, but they consume 40% of the Danish welfare budget.

Following Danish-Iranian artist Firoozeh Bazrafkan’s conviction under Danish Penal Code Section 266b (in Danish here) for condemning Islam as misogynist, a local Muslim Aarhus politician demanded a similar prosecution of Hassan. His poetry “says that everybody in the ghettos like Vollsmose and Gellerup steal, don’t pay taxes and cheat themselves to pensions,” the Somali-Dane Mohamed Suleban stated after reporting Hassan to the police on November 27. “Those are highly generalizing statements and they offend me and many other people.” Authorities are currently considering Section 266b charges for, according to one English translation, any public “communication by which a group of persons are threatened, insulted or denigrated due to their race, skin color, national or ethnic origin, religion or sexual orientation.”

Hassan first became prominent with an October 5 Danish newspaper interview entitled “I F**king Hate My Parents’ Generation.” In it he blamed poor Muslim parenting for the juvenile delinquency and social maladjustment experienced by many Danish Muslim youth such as Hassan himself. With more than 85,000 social media shares, the interview became the most shared Politiken article of the year.

Days thereafter Hassan recited from his “LANGDIGT” or “LONG POEM” before his book’s release on the Danish news program Deadline. Extract: “between the Friday prayers and the Ramadans/you want to carry a knife in your pocket/you want to go and ask people if they have a problem/although the only problem is you.” Such verses brought Hassan more death threats than any other previous Deadline guest. Hassan has subsequently reported 27 Facebook threats against him, of which the police investigated six as serious and pressed charges in one case of a 15-year old boy. A subsequent assault against Hassan occurred on November 18 in Copenhagen Central Station by a 24-year old Palestinian-Danish Muslim who had previously received a seven-year terrorism sentence.

Police safety concerns had forced the cancellation of an earlier, sold-out reading at a public library in Odense’s troubled district of Vollsmose. Along with Hassan, Culture Minister Marianne Jelved and several other Danish politicians criticized the Vollmose cancellation as “completely unacceptable.” Jelved demanded that police in Vollmose “make the necessary precautions” in order “to hold on to what democracy is, or otherwise we reduce it day by day.”

Yet Suleban’s charges might succeed in silencing Hassan where violence has failed. Jacob Mchangama, legal affairs director at Denmark’s liberal think-tank Cepos, sees a “strong case” against Hassan, particularly given a “range of similar preceding cases” like Bazrafkan’s. Hassan’s media attention and public popularity, though, might make conviction difficult, as “his poems are important social commentary.” Hassan’s acquittal “for making statements similar to what other people have been convicted for,” Mchangama nonetheless observed, “will expose a random legislation where no-one can be sure of what is legal to say.”

Hassan’s case presents speech codes functioning not just as a de facto blasphemy, but also as a de facto apostasy law protecting Islam. How, after all, can an atheist like Hassan, who says that there is “something wrong with Islam,” decide upon his religious views without rigorous testing of all faiths? For that matter, how could anyone answer Hassan’s call for a “reformation” in an Islam that “refuses to renew itself” without similar scrutiny? Such questions aside, Hassan remains committed to his criticisms, stating that he does not “care about getting convicted of racism.” Muslims threatening violence can likewise “all come and get me if they want. I don’t give a s**t about these morons.” “I know these people,” Hassan adds, “They can’t handle criticism…they’re not interested in dialogue.”

Andrew E. Harrod is a freelance researcher and writer who holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a JD from George Washington University Law School. You may follow Harrod on twitter at @AEHarrod.

In Denmark, construction crews raised the first-ever minaret on September 3 that will alter Copenhagen’s low-rise skyline in a colossal project to build the biggest mega-mosque in Scandinavia. The so-called Grand Mosque was made possible through a grant of 150 million kroner ($26 million) from Qatar. This gift has led critics voice concern that the mosque will become a mouthpiece for radical Islam in Denmark.

From Britain to Greece, and Spain to Slovenia, Muslim immigration and the accompanying rise of Islam are transforming the European way of life in ways unimaginable only a few years ago. What follows is a brief survey of 20 noteworthy stories involving Islam in Europe during just the month of September 2013.

In Britain, the Department of Education revealed that is recruiting former agents of the British secret service, MI5, to investigate the alleged infiltration of British schools by Islamic extremists. The agents will form part of a new counter-extremism unit, established to investigate schools in which radical activity has been suspected. Speaking to the Sunday Times on September 29, Education Secretary Michael Gove said some schools are being “taken over” by Muslim hardliners in the hope of radicalizing pupils and staff. He also said he was determined to “weed out” schools whose practices do not conform to British values.

A survey published by the BBC on September 25 revealed that more than a quarter of young British people distrust Muslims and feel Britain would be better off if there were fewer of them in the country. Of the 1,000 young people questioned in the survey conducted by ComRes, a leading market research agency, 27% of 18-to-24-year-olds said they did not trust Muslims, while 28% said Britain would be better off with fewer Muslims. It also emerged that 60% thought the British public had a negative image of Muslims, and 44% said Muslims do not have the same values as the rest of the population.

A separate survey published by Lord Ashcroft Polls on September 1, showed that six in ten Britons thought immigration had produced more disadvantages than advantages for their country; only 17% thought the pros outweighed the cons. The biggest concerns were about migrants claiming benefits or using public services without having contributed in return.

Elsewhere in Britain, a judge on September 16 ordered a Muslim defendant to take off her full-face veil to give evidence in court. But — in a case that made legal history — he said the woman could retain the veil for all other parts of her trial. Judge Peter Murphy said the court should recognize “freedom of religious expression,” but that allowing her to retain the niqab during her evidence, as she wanted, would “drive a coach and horses through justice administered in England and Wales for centuries.” Murphy said “the niqab has become the elephant in the courtroom” and there was widespread anxiety among judges over how to tackle the issue. He added that he hoped “Parliament or a higher court will provide a definite answer to the issue soon;” and that “If judges in different cases in different places took differing approaches [to the niqab] the result would be judicial anarchy.”

In other news, a total of 186 Muslim inmates at three different prisons are suing the British government, claiming their human rights were violated after tests confirmed that halal food being served to them contained pork meat. A total of 11,248 Muslim prisoners make up 13.1% of the jail population in Britain. The legal cases come amid fears of a growing “culture-of-being-compensated” among prisoners. More than £60 million ($97 million) was paid to criminals, prison staff and visitors to British jails over the past four years for prison-related incidents.

On September 12, the Birmingham Metropolitan College reversed a ban on Islamic veils after Muslim students complained of discrimination, and launched an online petition drive that gathered more than 8,000 signatures in just two days. The college backed away from its ban just hours before a mass demonstration by hundreds of Muslim students threatened to disrupt the normal functioning of the college.

In Denmark, construction crews in Copenhagen raised the country’s first-ever minaret on September 3. The 20-meter (65-foot) tower-like structure that will alter Copenhagen’s low-rise skyline is the finishing touch on a colossal project to build the biggest mega-mosque in Scandinavia. The so-called Grand Mosque, which will cater to Sunni Muslims, was made possible thanks to a 150 million kroner ($26 million) donation from the Persian Gulf Emirate of Qatar. This gift has led critics to voice concerns that the mosque will become a mouthpiece for radical Islam in Denmark.

An illustration of the Grand Mosque of Copenhagen.

In France, a new “Dictionary of Islamophobia” published on September 13 systematically takes the words and expressions spoken by politicians, journalists, intellectuals, artists and writers in France and claims to show how “Islamophobia is becoming commonplace today.” Each entry in the 366-page dictionary provides the context and an explanation of the offending words. The book calls for vigilance to advance the concept of “living together.”

In Germany, the state of Lower Saxony on September 30 signed a preliminary “state treaty” with local Muslim representatives to recognize Islam as an official religion. The document addresses 30 specific grievances presented by the Muslim community, which constitutes around 7% of the overall population of the state. According to the minister-president of Lower Saxony, Stephen Weil, “A mutual skepticism has occurred in the past and our government wishes to show its respect to the Muslims with this treaty.” Similar “treaties” have recently been signed in Bremen and Hamburg.

“there is not a single mosque or Muslim organization in Denmark that is not run by Islamists. As soon as you enter the house of the believers, you are met with Islamism whether you want it or not. As soon as you become a devoted Muslim, you are infected by extremism.”

He was the main instigator of the wave of Danish Muslim mischief that arose in reaction to the 2005 Muhammad cartoons and that resulted in riots, embassy burnings, an international boycott of Danish products, and over a hundred deaths.

Now, he says, he’s changed his mind – not just about the Muhammad cartoons, but about Islam itself. And about Denmark, too, for which he now professes the deepest affection and gratitude. In an August 22 op-ed for the Danish newspaper Politiken, in a lecture given at the Free Press Society, and in dozens of TV, radio, and print interviews in recent days, Ahmed Akkari has described his ideological journey from passionate jihadist to lover of liberty.

Born in Lebanon in 1978, Akkari was taken by his parents at age six to Denmark, where they were given asylum. His parents picked Denmark, he says, precisely because few immigrants lived there at the time; they figured it was a place where they could live a peaceful and assimilated life far from the turbulence of 1980s Lebanon.

Akkari attended regular Danish schools, where he learned about critical thinking, objective analysis, the scientific method. But then, at age sixteen, he started hanging around a local mosque and listening to “missionaries” who convinced him that they were “in possession of the truth and nothing but the truth.” Soon he was training to become an imam and learning to despise democracy and freedom of speech.

He found work as a teacher at a Muslim school. And then, in 2005 – the same year he was granted Danish citizenship – the newspaper Jyllands-Posten published the Muhammad cartoons. Akkari quickly became the public face and voice of the Muslim protests, stirring up rage among fellow believers not only in Denmark but around the world.

The cartoon riots peaked in 2006. After they died down, Akkari withdraw from public life for a while. He had time to think. And he began, he says, to see the importance of living in a society that makes room for “all lifestyles.”

Later that year, he settled temporarily in Lebanon. When Denmark evacuated Danish citizens from the country after a Hezbollah attack on Israel, Akkari was among them. “Despite the fact that I had done so much damage to Denmark, the country let me in again,” he recalls. “Nobody arrested me at the airport. I was not interrogated and nobody questioned my right to return.” (Mind-blowing, but that’s an article for another day.) This treatment, he says, made an impression on him, and helped lead him down the road to where he is today.

Then, in 2008, he took a teaching job in Greenland. “In the stillness of the polar nights,” writes Ingrid Carlqvist in Dispatch International, summarizing the story he told at the Free Press Society, “the thoughts came to Akkari. He started reading the world’s most important books.” He read world history and Enlightenment philosophers. “There was so much I didn’t know. I read about the freedom fighters who throughout history have tried to prevent religion from curtailing free thought and I realized that Denmark was in fact the oasis my parents had imagined.”

Indeed, Akkari claims that while in Greenland he “prayed to God never to send any Muslims” there because he “was so tired of corrupt imams spreading their totalitarian ideology that I was convinced they would not only melt the ice cap if they came there, but set it on fire.” Radio host Mads Holger and cultural critic Kasper Støvring, to whom Akkari recounted his Greenland sojourn on the air, describe his experience as “an existential crisis,” a “wandering in the desert,” a story “of almost biblical dimensions.”

Then, in 2011, during a visit to Lebanon, Akkari read a controversial book by one Hamid Nasr Abu Zeid that criticized Muslim “religious rhetoric.” Because of his book, Zeid had been declared an apostate and forced to divorce his wife. But Akkari liked what he read.

Eventually, after years of ideological doubt during which, he says, he would take “a step forward and then a step back,” Akkari arrived at a decision: he had changed his mind about Islam. And in late July, a reporter for the Danish newspaper BT persuaded him to go public with it. Since doing so, Akkari has been saying and writing the kinds of things that critics of Islam have been saying and writing for years – and that left-wing, cultural-elite commentators in Denmark and everywhere else have been consistently savaging as lies, lies, lies.

What distinguishes Akkari from some of us, however, is that he embraces – indeed, seems to cling to, as if to a life raft – the distinction, which some of us (myself included) find spurious, between “Islam” and “Islamism.” Islamism, he says, “the Quran and Muhammad’s life as the foundation for rituals, rules, and outlooks.” Islamists “assume that every word in the Koran is the law, and that every source provided by Muhammad is the basis for a law.” Islamists insist, moreover, “that they are in possession of the truth and nothing but the truth.”

To me, this sounds like Islam, pure and simple. If it’s Islamism, then what, in Akkari’s view, is Islam? The answer’s not clear. He does acknowledge that the majority of Muslims are, by his definition, Islamists: Islamist thought, as he puts it, “has infected most ordinary Muslims, who…can not imagine reading texts in other ways without feeling that they’re offending against God.” Yet he is – or wants to be seen as – one of that tiny minority of Muslims who assert that their faith, although rooted in a manual of hate and in the life story of a tyrannical, murderous pedophile, can somehow be turned into something entirely different from what it’s been since its inception.

Differentiating Islam from Islamism is obviously of vital importance to Akkari. Although many Danes, he says, “have interpreted my struggle against Islamism as an attack on Islam,” he insists that they “couldn’t be farther from the truth.” He makes a point of rejecting well-known Islam critics, such as Pia Kjærsgaard, founder of the Danish People’s Party, on the grounds that “Islam is not the real problem, but Islamism is.” For while Islamism, he argues, believes in “established truths” and “demands…a monopoly on the truth,” Islam “can be interpreted in many ways and is therefore compatible with democracy.” Islam, he claims, needs to be “released from the Islamists’ power.” He even envisions an Islam that “accepts…gays and atheists.” Well, I don’t get it (if you free Islam from what he calls Islamism, what’s left?), and I’m not betting on it, but – assuming he means it – good luck to him.

The Norwegian Royal Palace, located in the heart of Oslo, is surrounded by a pleasant little park called Slottsparken. It contains lawns, flower beds, and a rippling brook spanned by a footbridge. Behind the Palace is a small cabin where members of the palace guard spend their down time napping and watching TV.

A less charming feature of the park is that it’s also been the setting of several rapes – no fewer than five of them between June and October of 2011 alone. Things got so bad that the Radisson Hotel – which is just across the street from the park, a minute’s walk from the Palace – began to provide its guests with rape alarms to wear when going out for a stroll.

A newspaper profile of one of the 2011 Slottsparken rapists provides a pretty representative picture of the kind of individual who commits most of these crimes. The perpetrator was a young Iraqi man who came to Norway in 2003 as an asylum seeker. His asylum application was rejected, but – as is standard practice – he was allowed to stay anyway. Three years later, he brutally raped an 18-year-old girl outside Oslo’s City Hall and was sentenced to four years in prison. In 2009, after his release, a deportation order was issued; he challenged it in court; in 2010, he lost his case. Nonetheless, he was again allowed to stay. A year later, still in Oslo, he raped a woman outside the Royal Palace.

A Muslim asylum seeker; a rap sheet; a meaningless deportation order: in today’s Scandinavia, these are among the standard bullet points on many a rapist’s résumé.

Yes, as I’ve noted before, Scandinavian policing could be better. Much better. Especially in Oslo, where the force is woefully undermanned and underfunded. Seeing officers at work, you can get the impression they’re still being trained out of a manual from half a century ago, when Oslo was as sleepy, well-behaved, and foreigner-free as Andy Griffith’s Mayberry. Last September, an Oslo rape victim complained publicly that the cops had waited six months to take witness testimony from her thirteen-year-old son. Such stories are common. And not just in Oslo: this languorous approach to law enforcement is a familiar phenomenon throughout the Nordic countries, where the only real crime, it can sometimes seem, is to display a sense of urgency about anything.

But Scandinavia’s rising rape figures aren’t the fault of the police. As everyone without blinders on knows by now, this is a story about failed immigration policies and about Islam, which teaches contempt for infidels – especially unveiled women. As Scandinavia’s Muslim population has risen, so have the rape statistics.

When I wrote two years ago about the rape crisis in Oslo, its rape statistics had eclipsed those of Stockholm and Copenhagen, earning it the title of Scandinavia’s rape capital. Since then, however, the incidence of rape in Sweden has climbed precipitously. Daniel Greenfield reported in January that “Sweden now has the second highest number of rapes in the world, after South Africa, which at 53.2 per 100,000 is six times higher than the United States. Statistics now suggest that 1 out of every 4 Swedish women will be raped.” (Another recent study also puts Sweden at #2, but has Lesotho in the #1 spot.)

Over the last seven years, the number of rapes in Sweden has nearly tripled. During the first seven months of this year, a thousand rapes were reported in Stockholm – a 16 percent jump from last year. In three hundred cases, the victims were girls under age 15. This month the Danish paper Den Korte Avis reported that rape is now at least five times more common in Sweden – where public discussion of immigration problems is essentially verboten – than in Denmark, where the subject has been openly debated for years (leading to mild reforms that have prompted bien pensant Swedes and Norwegians to slam Danes as racists).

There’s overwhelming anecdotal evidence that rapists in Sweden – like those in Denmark and Norway – are disproportionately Muslim. The Swedish government collects statistics on such matters, but won’t release them. If it’s taboo in Sweden to discuss the country’s rising Muslim population, Den Korte Avis observed, what’s even more taboo is linking it to the rising number of rapes. An independent study, however, concludes that 85 percent of rapists in Sweden are foreign-born – primarily from North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.

As Scandinavia’s rape crisis has intensified, new features have emerged. For one thing, it’s spread from the cities to the provinces. There’s been an uptick in kinds of rape – such as gang rape – that were hardly ever seen in Scandinavia before. Today’s rapes, moreover, tend to be more violent than yesterday’s.

“The next thing could be that Danish nurses are forced to go under cover as Muslim women in order to please Muslim patients.” — Martin Henriksen, Spokesman, Danish People’s Party [DF]

One of the largest hospitals in Denmark has admitted to serving only halal beef — meat that is slaughtered in accordance with strict Islamic guidelines — to all of its patients regardless of whether or not they are Muslim.

The revelation that Danes are being forced to eat Islamically slaughtered meat at public institutions has triggered a spirited nationwide debate about how far Denmark should go to accommodate the estimated 250,000 Muslim immigrants now living in the country.

The halal food row erupted in July when the Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet reported that Hvidovre Hospital near Copenhagen has been secretly serving only halal-slaughtered meat for the sake of its Muslim patients, for the past ten years. The hospital serves more than 40,000 patients annually, many (if not most) of whom presumably are non-Muslim.

Halal — which in Arabic means lawful or legal — is a term designating any object or action that is permissible according to Islamic Sharia law. In the context of food, halal meat is derived from animals slaughtered by hand according to methods stipulated in Islamic religious texts.

One such halal method, called dhabihah, consists of making a swift, deep incision with a sharp knife on the neck that cuts the jugular vein, leaving the animal to bleed to death. Much of the controversy involving halal stems from the fact that Sharia law bans the practice of stunning the animals before they are slaughtered. Pre-slaughter stunning renders the animals unconscious and is said to lessen their pain.

Amid a surge of public outrage over the decision to serve only halal beef, Hvidovre Hospital’s vice president, Torben Mogensen, has been unapologetic. “We have many patients from different ethnic backgrounds, which we must take into account, and it is impossible to have both the one and the other kind of beef,” he says.

“First,” Mogensen adds, “I do not think that a slaughter method as such has anything to do with faith. Second is, of course, that all chickens in Denmark are halal slaughtered, and it has to my knowledge not caused anyone to stop eating chicken.”

Mogensen also says the hospital is not trying to “push the Islamic faith down the throats of non-Muslim patients”

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In a separate but related story, Ekstra Bladet reported that at least 30 nurseries, preschools and daycare centers in Denmark have banned the Danish national dish — pan-fried meatballs known as frikadeller — because they include pork and are offensive to Muslim children.

Ishøj Municipality — a town on the island of Zealand in eastern Denmark where most of the population is of African, Arab, Pakistani or Turkish origin — has introduced, to accommodate Muslim children, a blanket policy of not serving pork, including frikadeller, sausages or liver pâté, at any of its daycares or nurseries.

The newspaper also reports that in parts of Copenhagen, the dietary ban has gone beyond pork and some schools are now serving only halal meat because the schools’ leadership say they do not want to offend Muslims.

At 11:20 a.m. on Feb. 5, Lars Hedegaard answered his door bell to an apparent mailman. Instead of receiving a package, however, the 70-year-old Danish historian and journalist found himself face to face with a would-be assassin about one third his age. The assailant shot him once, narrowly missing his head. The gun locked, Hedegaard wrestled with him, and the young man fled.

Given Hedegaard’s criticism of Islam and his even being taken to court on criminal charges of “hate speech,” the attack reverberated in Denmark and beyond. The Associated Pressreported this incident, which was featured prominently in the British press, including the Guardian, the Daily Mail, and the Spectator, as well as in Canada’s National Post. The Wall Street Journal published an article by him about his experience.

When the New York Times belatedly bestirred itself on Feb. 28 to inform its readership about the assassination attempt, it did not so much report the event itself but an alleged Muslim support for Hedegaard to express himself. As implied by the title of Andrew Higgins’ article, “Danish Opponent of Islam Is Attacked, and Muslims Defend His Right to Speak,” he mainly celebrates Danish Islam: “Muslim groups in the country, which were often criticized during the cartoon furor for not speaking out against violence and even deliberately fanning the flames, raised their voices to condemn the attack on Mr. Hedegaard and support his right to express his views, no matter how odious [emphasis added].” This theme pervades the piece; for example, Karen Haekkerup, the minister of social affairs and integration, is quoted pleased that “the Muslim community is now active in the debate.”

(For a close dissection of this agitprop, see Diana West’s evisceration; and see Andrew Bostom’s analysis for a comparison of Higgins to Walter Duranty, the NYT reporter who whitewashed Stalin’s crimes.)

These characterizations of Hedegaard’s work are a vicious travesty. A few specifics:

1. What Higgins airily dismisses as Hedegaard’s “opinions” is in fact a substantial oeuvre in several academic books and articles laden with facts and references dealing with Islamic ideology, Muslim history, and Muslim immigration to Denmark. Those books include:

To the best of my knowledge, no one has claimed these writings contain sloppy scholarship or wrong references. As Hedegaard puts it, “I am a university-trained historian and take my craft seriously.” The real criticism of Hedegaard is not about his scholarship – but that he raises difficult and even unpleasant questions.

In my earlier blog about NY Times agitprop journalist Andrew Higgins, who calumniated a real journalist and historian, Lars Hedegaard, I mentioned Higgins’ warped hagiography of The Danish Muslim Society, and its two recent leaders, whose role in fomenting the cartoon riot carnage — 200 dead and over 800 wounded — Higgins failed to discuss.

Higgins also singled out for praise Minhaj ul Quran International, which he characterized as “the Danish offshoot of a controversial group in Pakistan that has taken a hard line at home against blasphemy.” Diana West, citing a 2006 article “Free Speech in Denmark“, which was co-authored by Lars Hedegaard, notes that Minhaj ul Quran’s leader, Tahir ul-Qadri wrote these words, consistent with the Sharia, on the universal application of Islamic “blasphemy” law:

The act of contempt of the finality of the Prophet (peace be upon him) is a crime which can not be tolerated whether its commission is direct or indirect, intentional or un-intentional. The crime is so sanguine that even his repentance can not exempt him from the penalty of death.

Although ul-Qadri, of Pakistani descent, tried to deny his own words, in a failed effort at sacralized Islamic dissimulation, or “taqiyya,” watch the video, below, which captures his proud championing of Pakistan’s blasphemy law and its lethal consequences for non-Muslims, in particular.

These liberty-crushing, murder-inciting remarks of ul-Qadri were apparently of no concern to Mr. Higgins. But Higgins did find time to label Anders Gravers (using, perhaps, a deliberately vicious pun on his trade), “a xenophobic butcher from the north,” because Gravers opposes the aggressive efforts of Denmark’s Muslims to Islamize Danish society. Compare Gravers’ peaceful exercise of free speech, voicing his strong opposition to Sharia encroachment in his native Denmark, to ul-Qadri’s unabashed call for the murder of non-Muslim “blasphemers”-and then lying about that heinous record of support for the application of Islamic blasphemy law.

“I live in a government safe house. I wear a bulletproof jacket. I have not walked the streets … in more than seven years. [I am] imprisoned in my own country for the mere fact that I have spoken out against the enemies of the West.” — Geert Wilders, MP, Netherlands

Lars Hedegaard, a well-known seventy-year-old free speech activist and critic of Islam, narrowly escaped a murder attempt on February 5 outside his home in Copenhagen, Denmark.

An unidentified assailant wielding a handgun fired a shot at Hedegaard, but fled on foot after the bullet missed its intended victim and the gun subsequently jammed.

According to Danish media, the gunman, in a postal service uniform, rang the doorbell of Hedegaard’s apartment building on the pretext of delivering a package. When Hedegaard opened the front door, the man pulled out a gun and fired a shot, narrowly missing Hedegaard’s head.

Danish police say they are searching for the suspect, whom they describe as “a man of a different ethnic background than Danish.” He is believed to be in his 20s and has a “Middle Eastern appearance.” Speculation is that the assailant is a Muslim because of critical statements that Hedegaard has made regarding Islam.

Hedegaard is the president of the Danish Free Press Society, a watchdog group that often warns that free speech is under threat from radical Islam. Hedegaard also co-edits a weekly online newspaper called Dispatch International, which covers stories in Danish, English and Swedish about a variety of topics, including content that is critical of radical Islam.

Hedegaard’s partner, Swedish journalist Ingrid Carlqvist, says the attack was a brazen attempt to silence a courageous free-speech warrior, one who has not been afraid to challenge official myths about the impact of multiculturalism and Muslim mass immigration on European society.

As if to prove Carlqvist’s point, Danish officialdom has uniformly linked the attack on Hedegaard with the exercise of free speech in the country.

Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a Social Democrat, said: “An attack on Lars Hedegaard is a heinous act which I condemn in the strongest terms. It is even worse if the attack is rooted in an attempt to prevent Lars Hedegaard to use his freedom of expression.”

Former Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, who leads the center-right Liberal Party, said the attack was a “cowardly and cruel act.” He added: “If this action is rooted in preventing Lars Hedegaard from using his freedom of speech, we are witnessing an attack on all Danes.”

The former leader of the conservative Danish People’s Party, Pia Kjærsgaard, who has long warned about the negative effects of multiculturalism and runaway immigration, said it is “un-Danish” if people cannot give their opinions without risking their lives. She added: “It is incomprehensible and shocking if the motive is political. If this is the case, it shows that it is dangerous to make use of our constitutional freedom of expression.

The leader of the left wing Socialist People’s Party, Annette Vilhelmsen, called the incident “totally unacceptable.” She said: “I probably do not agree with Lars Hedegaard on very much. But in Denmark we have freedom of speech. Political assassinations affect not just real people, they hit our democracy and our freedom of thinking.”

Hedegaard has been at the vanguard of a decade-long effort to fight back against restrictions to free speech in Europe, especially speech that is critical of Islam.

In April 2012, Hedegaard was acquitted by the Danish Supreme Court on charges of “hate speech” for comments he made about Islam.

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-basedGatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him onFacebook.